


The Lone Red Tree

by purple_bookcover



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mythology, Felix Birthday Week, M/M, Pretentious, felix bday week, weird formatting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-02-19 16:44:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22847467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purple_bookcover/pseuds/purple_bookcover
Summary: The world is dying when Ashe, god of the underworld, meets Felix under the lone red tree.
Relationships: Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 20
Kudos: 24
Collections: Felix Birthday Week 2020





	1. Spring

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is for day three of "Felix Birthday Bash 2020," prompt "loyalty/betrayal | fairy tales/myths AU."
> 
> This is, very loosely, a retelling of the story of Persephone and Hades. I am aware that everyone and their mom has retold Persephone, so I tried to do something slightly different with it. 
> 
> #
> 
> For this and the rest of Felix BDay Week, I am doing ASHELIX WEEK. I am posting 7 new fics. On Ashe Week (in March), I'll be posting Chapter 2 of ALL seven fics. So come back then for the conclusion to these stories.

R

D

E 

Gilded  
and  
gleaming, peeling

O

P

E

N

dripping flesh revealing a f r e c k l i n g of seeds strewn over the earth. Unripe potential. 

It bursts, 

red like pomegranate seeds, 

and the juices slide over the horizon. The world fills with red. A new world, raw and bleeding, soft and smooth, 

unblemished .

#

Scars. Nails raking across the  
clean red earth. Solidifying cl  
ay. Wine spilled, seeping dow  
n into the dirt, turning it into s  
omething darker, firm and real

#

The Gods Breathe.  
heat enters the earth, the breath of life, and now there is more than just wine dark dirt. now there is life. it wriggles in the muck, tasting the fresh blood of a raw world, carving scars into the new land, scars to give this fragile place a shape. lacerations laced beneath the ground spread like a great lattice, holding this new world in place, stilling its restless birth

The Gods Mold.  
their hands knead the dirt, their fingers push into the soil, their palms press plains into flatness. they scoop out oceans, filling them with the grief of living; they draw up mountains, stone screaming as it stretches to the sky like jagged teeth. the world is given form, rough and subtle, blunt and beautiful and bound

The Gods Leave.  
their work complete, they draw away, abandoning this raw and ragged place to heal. some leave behind a hair, a nail, a single eyelash, tethers to this mewling land struggling to sprout, and from those threads come humans

A Few Gods Stay.

#

**Seasons Begin**  
 _Short, too few, too brief. An eternal beginning_

  * Spring: Lone Moon, Great Tree Moon, Harpstring Moon
  * Summer: Garland Moon, Blue Sea Moon, Verdant Moon



**Spring**

m n i l s h e r h  
a a t l l t e a t

neatfurrowsrunninginrows  
neatfurrowschurningthedirt

The ground e x h a l e s and all the h e a t 

escapes.

The gods folded heat and life into the dirt, bakers folding air into dough so it could rise. 

But Felix carves furrows into the ground, neat furrows like veins opening up and sighing out warm blood. Row upon row. The seeds fall inside, marching within the churned up earth in straight lines. Then Felix folds the earth back down like folding a blanket over a lover's shoulders. 

Felix is not a god. There is no heat, no life in his palms, just the work of a man, the careful attention of human hands in the springtime, churning up the earth, folding it back down, nudging the spark of life lingering among all those exhaled breaths. 

The rains come. The rains pass. 

The seeds

s s s s  
p p p p  
r r r r r  
o o o o  
u u u u  
t t t t t

**Summer**

red

Felix collects the bounty of the seeds folded away in spring. He pulls from the earth, cuts and collects. The furrows are less neat. Roots and feet have muddled the rigid lines. They are like wrinkles, curling and random and speaking to age and hardship. 

red

Felix fills baskets with corn, potatoes, garlic, blackberries, peaches and plums, squash and cucumbers and watermelons. Red returns to the earth, red scars where stem once connected to fruit, red puckers where the plants once tethered to and fed their offspring. 

red 

The sky burns red in long, lazy sunsets. The earth is red where it is churned up and exposed. Red where the furrows lay open and bare, shriveled veins fully depleted. Red where leaves given no respite burn rather than rest. 

red 

One tree stands alone, breaking the orderly furrows. Red bulbs hang from the branches, swelling as they pass from season to season, red bulbs like droplets of burning sunset captured as dew on the branches. Felix does not collect the fruit. 

**Spring**

Spring returns. The rains come. Felix tills the earth. 

**Summer**

Summer returns. The rains pause. Felix collects everything but the fruit of a single tree. 

**Spring**

Spring returns. The rains come. Felix tills the earth. 

**Summer**

Summer returns. The rains pause. Felix collects everything but the fruit of a single tree. 

**Spring**

Spring returns. The rains come. Felix tills the earth. 

**Summer**

Summer returns. The rains pause. Felix collects everything but the fruit of a single tree. 

_A Few Gods Have Stayed_

Largely, they leave the humans to their scuttling. Felix does not pray to them. He goes about his work. And if the earth is hot and reticent or warm and receptive, he does not blame the gods for this but rather his own hands. 

Others pray. Felix lets them. They pray over his furrows, they pray for his crops, they pray to the red sun and the brief spans of cool darkness and the breath between the seasons. They pray for Felix's baskets to overflow with potatoes and berries and squash. They pray for the lone red tree.

_The Lone Red Tree_

Felix sees a man under the lone red tree. He sits with his back against the trunk, looking up at the constellations of heavy, red fruits hanging over his head. They seem like they could drop at any moment, splitting open and weeping red juices through his silver hair. There are pomegranates lying around him, some cracked and staining the ground. 

“You never harvest from this tree,” the silver-haired man says. 

Felix sets down his tools, his baskets, stepping into the shade. It is oddly cool. He shivers. “So?”

“Do you not like this tree?”

Felix shrugs. “It is a fine tree.”

“Then why do you not eat from it as you eat from everything else?” the man says.

“I don't know,” Felix says. “I just don't.” 

“Would you like to?” the man says. 

“I don't think so,” Felix says. 

The man shrugs, stands. Felix sees his eyes are cool. Green, perhaps blue, cold like the shadows in which they stand, but it's a chill like mint soothing the tongue on a hot day, a chill like night when the whole world rests and exhales. 

“Call me Ashe,” the man says. 

“Why?” Felix says. 

“Because I'll see you again,” Ashe says. “You ought to have something to call me.” 

He leaves. Felix returns to his work.

#

**Seasons Continue**  
 _The world frays, never sleeping_

**Spring**

The next time he sees Ashe, the silver-haired man stands under the lone red tree with a pomegranate in his hand. He slices it open with a small knife, revealing two symmetrical halves. 

“Pretty, isn't it?” Ashe says.

“I guess,” Felix says.

“Balanced,” Ashe adds. 

“I suppose,” Felix says. 

Ashe laughs, a short sound with no joy in it. “You know very little of balance.” 

“Perhaps,” Felix says. 

Ashe tilts his head. “What do you know, then?” 

“I know how to care for the fields,” Felix says. “I know how to plant the crops, tend them, collect the harvest, feed people.” 

“Those are good things,” Ashe says, “but there are other things.”

“I have no need of other things,” Felix says. 

“Well,” Ashe says and smiles. It is the strangest smile Felix has ever seen because it is so very sad. 

**Summer**

The fields burn under a red sky. Felix collects the harvest, but the earth gives him less and less with each passing moon. His father, who oversees the harvest, asks why, but Felix does not know. He does what he has always done: tilling the earth, planting the seeds, tending them through the spring to harvest them in the summer. 

Ashe sits under the lone red tree, rotted pomegranates withering on the ground around him. Felix sits with him, enjoying the strange coolness that only exists when Ashe is near. He looks sad and Felix follows his gaze to the soft, split pomegranates like globs of wax. 

“Does it make you sad?” Felix asks. 

“Yes,” Ashe says. “Doesn't it make you sad?” 

“No,” Felix says. “Worried.”

“We could fix it,” Ashe says. He picks up one of the melted pomegranates. The seeds ooze into his palm. 

“We?” 

Ashe nods. “You are the Keeper of the Harvest. Who else should I ask?” 

“I am no Keeper,” Felix says. “I just tend the fields.” 

“And yet,” Ashe says, “the gods who left something behind left it in your fields, left it for you to tend.” 

“I do not know the gods,” Felix says. 

“That does not mean we do not know you,” Ashe says. The seeds swim in his palm. A breeze slides around the lone red tree and in it Felix tastes a relieved exhale. Felix's skin prickles, bumps rippling up his arms. 

Ashe offers his hand to Felix. Felix reaches for the seeds, meets skin instead, cool and smooth, not like rock but instead like water, chilled and still and teeming with life. 

Felix jerks his hand away. Ashe lets the seeds slip to the ground where they darken against the hot earth.

**Spring**

They call it spring out of habit, but true spring never arrives. The sky pales from red to orange. The crops wither in relief, but are more yellow than green. The seeds Felix sets into the furrows cringe away from the heat of their beds. Felix covers them without hope.

**Summer**

Felix never realized before how Ashe clung to the shadow of the lone red tree. Not until the leaves of that tree thin and fall out, narrowing the shadow to a sliver pressed against the trunk.

That is where Ashe stands, his silver hair as pale as the thirsty trunk. He holds a single pomegranate seed; the tree has lost all its fruit. 

“The crops are dying,” Felix says. “There won't be enough. They refuse to grow.” 

“I know,” Ashe says. Sunlight slashes across his hand as he extends it to offer the seed. “We could fix it.” 

“I'm not ready,” Felix says. “I don't know how.” The excuses keep coming. Ashe smiles patiently through them. 

“I'm sorry,” Ashe says, sounding like he actually means it. “I see how careful and deliberate you are, how meticulous. But the shadows grow shorter. We cannot wait.” 

“What will we do?” Felix says. “How will we fix it?”

“You will rest,” Ashe says, “and this earth with you. Your hands will still. The sky will darken. The rains will come and they will not stop until the ground is so soaked it pushes them back out. It will be hard days, long and dark, but I will be with you. And when it ends, you will return to the sun and your fields will be ready and they will yield their harvest again.”

“Are you sure?” Felix says.

“Yes,” Ashe says. 

“How?” 

Ashe smiles, with joy, finally, and uses his free hand to tug Felix into the thin strip of shadow. The world shifts. Red becomes silver, warmth becomes coolness, light becomes darkness. Felix is so close now he can count the freckles on Ashe's cheeks. Twenty-one, to be precise. Twenty-one seeds scattered across a cool, dark field. 

Felix understands. Even so, Ashe says, “Look up.” 

He does. Twenty-one stars freckling a dark sky, a sky unlike any Felix has ever seen, cool and blue and drifting like a river. 

When Felix looks down, Ashe holds the seed up between them. Felix takes it. Felix

e

a

**Fall**

t

s

the seed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You have no idea how many times I had to hit preview to get this stupid thing to kind of behave. Why did I do this? 
> 
> I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/purplebookcover) (18+ please).
> 
> I respond to every comment. Thank you, friends!
> 
> Join the [Ashelix discord](https://discord.gg/cjFuCx) to hear my incoherent screeching about my beloved rarepair! (Ask for link if it's broken)


	2. Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felix sleeps. 
> 
> Ashe watches.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is for Ashe Week, prompt "training, hobbies." OK... this has nothing to do with the prompt but... oh well.

**Fall**

Felix sleeps, mostly. And Ashe watches.

The rains come. The rains do not pass.

Thegroundinhales  
aheldbreathtighta  
ndclosefillingwith  
therainthatfallsand

f

a

l

l

s

.

Felix sleeps. His skin is pink with the heat it finally exhales, heat that curls up to the heavens, freckled with twenty-one cool silver stars. 

Ashe watches over him. It is a difficult task, even within the safety of the world beneath the lone red tree. The earth above is

r  
a  
w  
a  
n  
d  
f  
r  
a  
g  
i  
l  
e

s l i d i n g a w a y f r o m i t s e l f

as the rains continue

to fall and fall

and fall

. 

**Winter**

Felix's people disliked Fall. They dislike Winter more. 

They search for him, but none think to look beneath the lone red tree. 

When the rains soaked up by the earth begin to freeze, they cease searching. 

Felix sleeps. Ashe lays beside him, keeping his body warm enough, letting it cool. 

**Spring**

Felix wakes up. 

He is afraid. It is only natural. 

“Where am I?” he says.

“My home,” Ashe says. “I have been looking after you.” 

“Can I leave?” he says.

“Of course.” 

Ashe watches him go. The red sun rises, thawing the ice and rain. 

Felix carves new furrows in the damp earth. They are jagged and uneven, but the seeds do not cringe away this time, they do not recoil from the heat. The long, dark time has left water in the ground. It nourishes the seeds, cools the roots that nuzzle into the dirt. 

The world flourishes. 

**Summer**

The world is whole.elohw si dlrow ehT

There is balance.ecnalab si erehT

The earth wakes and rests.stser dna sekaw htrae ehT

All things in their time.emit rieht ni sgniht llA

#

**The Seasons**  
 _A smooth cycle, rest and rebirth, cool and hot, rain and earth._

  * Spring: Lone Moon, Great Tree Moon, Harpstring Moon
  * Summer: Garland Moon, Blue Sea Moon, Verdant Moon
  * Fall: Horsebow Moon, Wyvern Moon, Red Wolf Moon
  * Winter: Ethereal Moon, Guardian Moon, Pegasus Moon



#

**Fall**

_The Last God Leaves_

Ashe watches from beneath the lone red tree. It is not in his nature to step into the sunlight, even this new, cooler sunlight. 

Felix fills his baskets. They overflow this season. Ashe smiles. The earth is still ragged at the edges, still hurt and raw, but healing has begun. The sun shines golden. The leaves return to the trees, orange and red, but blazing rather than burning. The nights bring a soothing chill. The stars blink open over a renewed world, a lovely world. 

Ashe turns away. This world does not need him anymore. It has found its own balance.

“Are you leaving?” 

Ashe stops, finds Felix standing at the edge of the lone red tree, a basket in his arms. A bounty of potatoes and berries and corn and pumpkins clambers over the lip. 

“We fixed it,” Ashe says, waving at the fields around them. “Rather, we let it fix itself. Or begin to.”

“Will it be OK?” Felix says.

“Yes,” Ashe says, “if you allow it.” 

“Why would I do otherwise?”

Ashe shrugs. “Humans are strange creatures sometimes.” 

Indeed, one of the strangest stands before him now, this Keeper of the Harvest, this tender of fields, picker of plants, tiller of the earth. This odd human who slept under the lone red tree and allowed the rains to come. This creature who brought warmth to Ashe's realm. 

“Well, will you come back?” Felix says. 

Ashe is frozen. Ashe is more still than he has been in eons of living. 

“There would be no need,” Ashe says. “The gods have left this place.”

“You have not left.”

“I will,” Ashe says. “Soon. Now.” 

Felix takes a step toward him, into the shadow of the lone red tree, a broad shadow, now that the tree has regained its foliage. The move startles Ashe. He ponders, for an instant, running from this mortal. But, then, isn't he the one who found Felix in the first place, chose him for this task, watched over him beneath the lone red tree so the rains might arrive? 

“Will it be OK?” Felix says. “Will the world burn if you leave?”

Ashe smiles. “I'm not that important.” 

“You must be,” Felix says. “You saved the fields.”

Ashe moves toward the strange mortal. He feels in that moment that he must. “You helped,” he says, testing, pulling. 

“What if I hadn't?” 

“Then the world would have died,” Ashe says. 

Felix considers this, considers the fields behind him, the laden basket in his arms, the shade in which he stands. 

“Then I must join you,” he says.

“You will die,” Ashe says. “Your life as a man will end.”

Felix nods, as though this is nothing to him. Strange, singular mortal that he is. “If that is how this land might live, then that is what I must do.” He speaks plainly and only in facts, all of them equal in weight.

Because it is Fall and there is not much time, Ashe nods. “Come with me,” he says.

The rains come.

**Winter**

Felix wakes early this time. He watches the world freeze beside Ashe. 

“This is as it should be?” Felix says.

Ashe forgets sometimes that Felix has not seen the healing he brought. “It is,” he says.

They watch, together, until it is time for Felix to return.

**Spring**

This time, when Felix goes back, his people question him. They have noticed, now, that the rain and cold and dark arrive when he leaves. They have noticed Ashe beneath the lone red tree. 

Felix speaks with them. Ashe cannot hear, but he can see. 

It does not matter.

They come to the tree. And while Ashe watches, below, far below, they cut it down. 

**Summer**

A red summer comes. 

Fall will not follow. Winter will not come. Felix will remain on the earth. 

And the earth will burn.

#

**Spring**

Red. The earth burns.

**Summer**

Red. The earth burns.

**Spring**

Red. The earth burns.

**Summer**

Red. The earth burns.

#

Cycle follows cycle. Red returns. The earth exhales. Seeds cringe away from their beds. The crops wither and recoil, leaves turning crisp under an unrelenting sun.

Ashe remains in the place where the lone red tree once stood, far below, where even its roots have dried up and died. 

There are moments, reprieves. Ashe feels them tunnel through the soil, a thread of coolness woven among a burning world. It is not enough, but Ashe nurtures it anyway, cups it in his hands, pushes it along its way with his own breath. 

He gets a response, a single seed, red and shriveled, desperately small. He presses it to his lips, tastes a fleeting kiss of coolness, a plea, a call. 

It 

s  
p  
r  
o  
u  
t  
s

pushing upward, creating new branches as the old ones burn, forcing its way through heat and pressure. And, somehow, it reaches the earth and

s  
t  
u  
o  
r  
p  
s

It is along this tenuous tether that Ashe feels Felix, feels him like the bulb at the end of a stem, like the leaf at the end of a branch. Ashe is the root. 

He pulls.

#

When the gods made the earth, made the universe, they made each other as well. They made a god for the earth, a god for the stars, a god for the water, for the sun, for all the green, growing things.

When they made Ashe, they made a god for death, for the end of things, for the silent, still places waiting in the dark. 

A god to exist alone.

But no god had made Felix. That was the work of humans, of strange, fickle creatures with strange, fickle wills. Perhaps it is a mere whim that compels Felix to return to the place where the lone red tree once stood. Perhaps it is dumb luck, random happenstance, the guiding lights of humanity. 

Whatever it is, when Ashe feels that bright bulb high above the seed he nurtures, he cannot resist.

In the space between gods and men, they find each other, entangling like roots.

#

**Fall**

The rains come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now that it's done, I'm prepared to say that I envisioned this as sort of a "humans are destroying the earth" fic. Felix is well-meaning but overworking the earth and it's only when he stops moving that things can heal. Ashe as Hades is actually a positive force and not an eerie specter, part of the cycle of life. And humanity's attempt to ignore and hide from him only makes things worse.
> 
> I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/purplebookcover) (18+ please).
> 
> I respond to every comment. Thank you, friends!
> 
> Join the [Ashelix discord](https://discord.gg/cjFuCx) to hear my incoherent screeching about my beloved rarepair! (Ask me for link if it's expired!)


End file.
